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Four Poems

Ghetto,the sound defining the pitch of color.Lightning,sorting out thunder.

Manage Your Field

Spit on the sun.Wipe your forehead.

Make tired the hungry ones.Feed them.

The entrails start to tremble.The leg trembles.

The trees chain trade.The felloes, all

askew, the celery withthe golden edge. Again, horse

swam in, drowned.Juice is always.

Herd is always.There’s always a Boer.

are you the one

are you the one who stuck the knife in his own bellyi’m the one who stuck the knife in his own bellywhat did you think while doing itwhile doing it i thought i have to stick the knife in my bellywas the edge well honedthe point is the point the edge is not that importantthe point decides if the knife takes it nicelyhow comes the idea just a knife should be usedidea is good better than the othersonly it’s hard to rip up one’s bellymuch more difficult than to pierce itwhythe knife feels good doesn’t want to move any fartherwhat do you have now on that spota cavity

Tomaž Šalamun lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and has taught at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. His recent books in English are The Blue Tower (translated by Michael Biggins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011) and On the Tracks of Wild Game (translated by Sonja Kravanja, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012).

Michael Thomas Taren was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. His poems have been published in HTMLGIANT, The Claudius App, and Fence, and are forthcoming in Bestoned. He spent nine months in Slovenia on a Fulbright Scholarship (2010–2011). His manuscripts Puberty and Where is Michael were finalists for the Fence Modern Poets Series in 2009 and 2010, respectively.